FX Updates: 24 Komplete effects now with ARM Native support and MacOS Sonoma compatibility

Calagan

I don't get why only the VST3 are Apple Silicon native (even while sharing the same version number with the updated VST2 versions)...

Very strange decision...

And by the way, I don't notice much CPU improvement (around 10% better, when using lot of plugins and tracks)... But at least I can use them in a native session now...

Monochrome

Because VST2 is officially no longer supported, that's why. NI is slowly but surely porting its products to VST3 as that's the future.

safeite

Yeah, oddly none of the NI 2 versions works except 2.6 - which then updates itself automatically to a version that does not work.

NI 1 downgrades will be necessary for many users.

safeite

Yes checking on dependencies was the first thing I checked - they were all already checked off.

Jeremy_NI

@Calagan Apple doesn't support VST2 in Apple Silicon native, only in Rosetta mode.

Calagan

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/35200#Comment_35200

Hi @Jeremy_NI

I think you're wrong : almost all my plugins are Apple Silicon native and are VST2. Just an exemple : Black Rooster plugins are only VST2 and were recently updated to Apple Silicon native...

I can understand that NI doesn't want to update any further VST2 versions of its plugins, but it seems it's not because of Apple...

mikevas

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/35200#Comment_35200

This is not correct. There are loads of native Apple Silicon VST2 plugins.

Jeremy_NI

@Calagan @mikevas Let's put it this way. Other manufacturers found workarounds to provide compatible VST2 plug-ins. Since Steinberg will drop the VST2 format eventually, and given the size of NI's portfolio, porting everything to VST3 and M1 native support for AU and VST3 was prioritized.

mikevas

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/37097#Comment_37097

Totally get this. And agree with the decision.

Calagan

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/37097#Comment_37097

I understand the decision, but please just tell us that you don't support VST2 anymore because it's too much work and money. To tell us Apple doesn't support VST2 in native Apple Silicon version is just an obvious lie...

Given the general lost of trust NI and some other devs (like iZotope) experienced recently, I think it's always better to tell the truth to users. Even (and especially) if it's another decision that spoils the workflow of a lot of people...

I mean, it's been years NI had only VST2 versions of their plugins, and the projects of every NI user was full of VST2 versions of Reaktor, Kontakt, Absynth, Massive etc. etc. And then suddenly VST2 is not anymore supported and VST3 is the only way to get updated plugins.

Eddie_NI

The situation is actually a little complicated and different DAW and Plug-In manufacturers have decided to deal with this in different ways. First I'd like to clarify one point that was unfortunately not stated correctly in this thread before: It's not Apple that is in charge of supporting VST2. It's Steinberg.

Steinberg is the owner of the VST SDK that the DAW and Plug-In manufacturers use. The VST2 version of that SDK has not been updated since 2013 and will not be updated in the future by Steinberg. So Steinberg does not guarantee that it will work on the native Apple Silicon platform. Steinberg does not support VST2 on native Apple Silicon. And although it seems to be possible at the moment to use the VST2 SDK to build products that run natively on the current generation of Apple Silicon hardware nobody guarantees that this will be the case for future hardware, future versions of macOS or with future versions of the compilers needed to build the software. Some manufacturers are willing to take the risk and others don't.

Afaik there are also differing opinions on licensing/legal issues about whether the VST2 SDK license actually allows for releasing products for the Apple Silicon platform. But that is not my area of expertise so I can't explain what the situation there really is. Here again it seems to be that different companies came to different conclusions.

I understand how confusing and also frustrating this is for the users. Nobody seems to be happy with this situation. To make things a little better a lot of DAWs provide automatic functionality to use the VST3 versions instead of the VST2 in existing projects which makes the transition possible. Alternatively you could run your DAW in Rosetta mode which also allows the use of the VST2 versions of the plug-ins.

Jeremy_NI

@Eddie_NI Thanks a lot for chiming in and clarifying things, I had misunderstood!

Kymeia

'To make things a little better a lot of DAWs provide automatic functionality to use the VST3 versions instead of the VST2 in existing projects which makes the transition possible.'

This is true but to show further how complex this is, for this to work such a 'migration' feature also needs to be enabled by the plugin dev. Having this enabled in the DAW is in itself no guarantee it will work with all plugins if it hasn't also been enabled in the plugins themselves.

Calagan

Thanks for the clarification @Eddie_NI .

To add to the confusion, I just bought the last Sonimus console emu (that is M1 native), and the VST2 version clearly behaves better than the VST3. The most noticeable issue with VST3 : it stills uses a lot of CPU power even when not processing (contrary to the VST2 version), and it's a bit crazy if you think VST3 is precisely supposed to implement this feature (but it's not working, even if it's ok with VST2).

I have the same issue with many other plugins, where VST2 is behaving better than VST3.

So I guess you're right, Steinberg is faulty here. I hope NI will adopt CLAP format one day, because VST seems a mess to me...

Kymeia

Yes a good example is I'm finding the CLAP versions of u-he plugins manage multicore much more efficiently than their VST counterparts in Bitwig. I mean significantly better on M1 Max.